To who? Which people? Which countries? How do you promote democracy in Iran or Syria? I’m sure the Syrian and Iranian government would not welcome the additional American influences.
And these are long term activities anyway. There is still the immediate need of neutrilizing the existing terrorist threat.
I think it was more of a choice of 1500 calories a day with the Allies vs getting shot in the head by the Russians. The Soviets lost over 20 million people fighting the Germans. They were none too pleased by the time they marched into Berlin.
Must you put a dampener on this, it was an analogy. What this was about was the attraction of the ‘Western way’ compared to Islamism, they in the M.E have tried every ideology that has come along-all have failed. We only need to defeat Islamism to get their asses in gear for democracy.
Do you think that trying to defeat Islamism might stir up some feelings of resentment? Considering that they already think we are trying to destroy Islam?
Oh I’m not talking about defeating it in the military sense, although that may come into the situation sometimes. Theres a saying, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, we’re going to piss off people sometimes moreso than we’re doing now but if it prepares the way for their ideology to become a reduced and even bankcrupt force, then I’ll support it. Not that we’re doing this now, am just saying.
Islamism is a threat to the West foremost, and to the World.
The real root of the problem is oil. For as long as we depend on oil from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and other countries that provide the backbone of the support for Al Queda, Al Queda will still continue to exist. We cannot pressure those countries to do anything if they know that we must buy their oil. They’re not stupid.
What to do? Stop buying oil from any country in the Middle East. There are two main objections.
First, the objection that we need that oil. But we don’t. We get slightly more than a third of our oil from all OPEC countries combined. Reducing oil consumption by a third would hurt, but we would survive. And the moment we announced that we pursuing such a strategy, I bet a lot of companies would get cracking on some increased efficiency technologies pretty quick.
Second objection is that such a measure would be interference with the free market. Which is true, of course, but the government can do that if it’s necessary for national security. In fact we’re boycotting Cuba right now, we boycotted Serbia for years, and they both inflicted far less harm on us than Saudi Arabia has. During WWII the Japanese cut off all our tin and rubber supplies. The response was that civilians didn’t get rubber. If you busted a tire and you didn’t have a spare, you were SOL until the war was over. No one considered that offering to buy from the enemy was a good idea then, so why should it be now?
This strategy has many secondary advantages:
Good for the environment.
Reduces trade deficit.
Saves us from inflationary pressures of high oil pressures, which will continue to get worse otherwise.
Makes us look good in the eyes of most of the rest of the world.
The thing is though, its just too lucrative a market to give up to someone else. You try convincing a corporation which has fought and bought tooth and nail to acquire ownership and exploitation of these resources, you’d probably get kicked out of the office. The way I see things is that people and companies who do this, will only get the idea of alternative resources in the last minute, when its usually too late.
The problem is that Arab oil is not the same as Cuban sugar. If we embargo OPEC our economy takes a major hit. Buying oil from other sources will cost money. Meanwhile OPEC is forced to lower its prices and sells their oil to East Asia and Europe. The United States and Saudi Arabia launch an economic war and the Japanese win.
If the overlay of political/economic corruption and oppression were removed, I will stake my bet on modernism to win on its own. Hence, sex drugs, etc.